Face to Face
by Melira
Summary: Foggy has been wondering for a while now how it must be for Matt not to know what people look like. So he asks and gets an answer, he may not have expected. Inspired by Foggy telling Karen he "let Matt see him once" in the first season. One-shot.


Foggy sat at his desk, toying with his pencil. "Matt?", he asked into the silence only broken before by his roommate's finger trailing along the pages of his book.

The other man stopped reading, lifted his head and turned in his direction. "Yeah?"

"Do you ever wonder what other people look like? What I look like?" Foggy had been curious about this for a while now. It just seemed so normal to connect names to faces, he wondered what it was like when such a vital part of any interaction and relationship was missing.

Matt huffed in amusement. "According to you, you're the most handsome guy in law school. In all of Columbia, even. You have long hair, if I interpret the strands I regularly find lying around everywhere correctly..."

"There are no strands lying around!", Foggy protested, interrupting his roommate and simultaneously pulling his hand through his indeed long hair, trying to find loose strands so he could dispose of the evidence right there and then. "And even if there were, why shouldn't they belong to my secret girlfriend?"

"Secret girlfriend, right. Okay, correction, your honor. Based on the evidence presented to me -"

"Circumstantial evidence", Foggy interrupted him again.

"- the evidence presented to me", Matt repeated, grinning and undeterred, "it can be assumed that you have long hair. And as I am told that's back in fashion, it supports your claim of being good-looking."

"True, my hair is a big plus to my already flawless appearance." Foggy threw his mane back in a manner usually reserved for shampoo commercials, although he knew his friend couldn't see it.

Matt smiled and went on. "So, you have long hair. But you shave regularly and the stubble remaining in the sink are short, so I assume you don't wear a beard. At least not anymore; one time a few months back, they were longer but not as many as usual. So, I guess you started off with a partial beard and eventually got rid of it."

Foggy sputtered in indignation. "That's slander! First, you accuse me of leaving hair of the head lying around, now of the beard... And how would you know, anyway, you can't even see it!", he accused the other man.

"I do have a rather precise sense of touch, though."

"Hmpf." Foggy pouted and although Matt couldn't see that either, he laughed.

"Don't worry. It would be impossible for you to keep the room so clean that I wouldn't notice anything."

Foggy considered the statement for a moment. "That does make me feel better, actually. Thinking about it, when you notice everything anyway, why bother cleaning at all?"

"Oh, don't you dare make even more of a mess of this room than you already have!", Matt exclaimed in mock alarm.

Foggy glanced around. To him, the room looked perfectly tidy. "Even more of a mess?", he asked indignantly. "This room is as clean as an OR!" Save for his unmade bed, the chaos on his desk and the week-old socks next to his chair, maybe. Matt's half was spotless, though, he had to give his roommate that. Foggy wasn't quite sure if that was out of sheer necessity because Matt wouldn't find anything anymore, were his things not in perfect order or if it was just in line with his friend's character. He guessed the latter. Matt was such an overachiever, it seemed only fitting he would keep everything around him neat and tidy. From his always perfectly combed hair to the shirts in his closet which looked freshly ironed at all times. Foggy had no idea how his friend did it.

Matt brought his thoughts back to the conversation at hand. "Only yesterday, I almost landed flat on my face after tangling my feet in one of your trousers lying in the middle of the floor."

"Well, watch where you put them, then", Foggy teased, knowing Matt wouldn't mind the quip. "Your feet, I mean."

The other man cocked his head and raised his eyebrows at him. "I'll keep my eyes open next time."

"Good!" Foggy paused for a moment. "I'm sorry, man", he then amended, "I'll try to keep my stuff to my corner of the room. I keep forgetting you can't just see what's in front of you and step over it. Honestly, most of the time you're freakishly steady on your feet. More so than I am. How do you do that, anyway?"

"How am I steadier than you? That's not really a challenge! You trip standing still!"

"Objection, that's not true. And slander again, by the way."

"Should I remind you of last Saturday?" A wicked grin flashed over Matt's face.

"That was an exception!", Foggy protested. "How was I to know Vodka and Tequila didn't mix well?"

"Yeah, you're right, that was absolutely unforeseeable."

"Right?! Okay, so now that we've established that I am devilishly handsome with long hair, blonde by the way, but without my former goatee", Matt started saying something at that remark but Foggy just kept talking, "and am a well-balanced, tidy kind of guy, back to my original question. Do you ever wonder what I actually look like? I mean, long hair and no beard, that's not really specific, is it?"

Matt shook his head. "No, it isn't. But obviously I can't just take a look, so... You get used to it, after a while." Foggy noticed, as he often had before, that Matt spoke without any bitterness about what he had lost all those years ago. He had often marveled at how composed his friend was about the whole thing. "And it keeps me from judging on appearances", Matt continued, "that's a plus in our aspired line of work, if you ask me."

"True. I just wondered what that was like. I mean, you could meet a girl, marry her, spend the rest of your life with her and you would never know what she looks like."

Matt shrugged. "It's not that there aren't any ways I could find out what someone looks like. Actually, there are a few people whose faces I probably know better than you know mine."

Foggy didn't even have the time to ask before Matt lifted his hands in explanation, palms towards Foggy and slightly wiggling his fingers.

"I can see with my hands. And as I usually get the chance only once, I pay more attention than you would, looking at someone."

"That works?" Foggy was astounded. He looked down at his own hands, trying to imagine picturing someone's face just by touching it. "But how would you know what the feel looks like?"

"Practice, mostly. And there were a few people I had the chance to 'see'", Matt made quotation marks in the air, "both ways. My father, for example. With him, I knew exactly what he looked like and later, I felt it. Guess it helped a lot that I had stitched him up after fights about a hundred times before that accident, too, so I already knew how what my fingers felt translated into what I saw. Or would see, later. Plus, when you're blind, you get really good at identifying shapes and textures with your hands."

"Guess so." Foggy was quiet for a moment, not knowing if it was a good idea to say his next thought out loud. "Would you...", he paused. "Would you like to know what I look like?", he finally said, rather lower than he had spoken before. He had no idea if it was in any way appropriate to offer this. Good thing he rarely ever cared about what was appropriate and what wasn't, then.

Matt looked only mildly surprised, maybe he had expected where this was headed. "Only if you don't mind", he said. "It's gonna be a bit weird for you."

"I can live with that", Foggy answered. To be honest, he was so curious, he would have agreed had Matt told him it was rather painful.

"Well then...", Matt said and got up. When Foggy instinctively moved, too, even though he didn't know where to, Matt held up his hand. "No, just stay there."

Foggy watched him feel his way over from his desk, through the room and towards his side of it. When Matt had taken about three steps, Foggy suddenly exclaimed "Look out!", having just seen the worn t-shirt just a few inches from Matt's feet.

"As clean as an OR, you said?", Matt teased him.

"Even in an OR stuff can fall to the ground accidentally."

"Accidentally, of course." Carefully feeling the ground before him with his toes and then taking a bigger step than usual, Matt avoided the heap of fabric on the floor and finally reached Foggy's desk. He perched on the edge of it, facing his roommate.

"Just keep still. And maybe close your eyes, I guess that makes it a bit less awkward for you."

Foggy complied, feeling extremely weird, sitting in his chair, his best friend in front of him about to map his face with his fingers.

When Matt touched his shoulders to orient himself, Foggy couldn't help but say "I just hope no one's gonna come in here now. We'd never hear the end of it."

Matt just laughed.

Suddenly, two hands touched Foggy's face near his ears. Instantly, he fell silent and froze. He hadn't heard Matt move; the man could be freakishly quiet.

The fingers slowly felt their way towards his forehead and hair line, met there, then wandered down, carefully avoiding his closed eyes, down his cheeks, over his nose and towards his mouth. That part was probably the weirdest. Although there was absolutely nothing romantic about any of this and Matt's movements were quick and precise, much like a doctor's examination, it felt strange being touched at the lips by someone you didn't intend to sleep with. Matt reached Foggy's chin, moved up again towards his ears, then down his neck, trailing along his hair and finally let go.

"You can open your eyes", he said and Foggy saw him leaning back, his face neutrally controlled. Foggy had no idea which expression adorned his own. A wild mixture of awkwardness and fascination, probably.

He had long since adopted Matt as his best friend. After years of sharing a room, frequenting numerous bars together, attending the same courses and studying for the same exams, he had thought they couldn't get much closer to one another, but somehow... This had been a whole lot more intimate than everything they had done before. More than Matt pulling him home when Foggy had overestimated his tolerance for alcohol again, more than being laughed at for the hangover the next day, and more than being reassured it was her loss when some girl or other had brushed off Foggy's attempts at flirting. It was a strange feeling, somehow. Not unpleasant, but strange. Like their friendship was somehow final now, never to be broken again. As if they had crossed some invisible line of brotherly commitment.

Foggy almost shook his head at himself for such pompous, melodramatic thoughts. But Matt seemed to feel the same way, somehow, if his expression was anything to go by. He stayed at the edge of Foggy's desk for a moment longer, his head turned slightly upwards, then quietly said "Thank you", got up and walked back to his own desk, carefully avoiding the shirt still lying on the floor.

"You're welcome", was everything Foggy said before they both fell back into silence.


End file.
